Island Style Gardening and Plant-Based Living

As I shake off months/years of anti-gardening funk and start to grow some things again, it’s a bit like meeting up with old friends. Time stands still for some friends doesn’t it? No matter how much time passes, you pick up exactly as you left off. But in this case, my plant friends that have far more slug problems than I recall them having in the past! So every night for a week now I’ve gone out after dark (sometimes with preschooler and eldest in tow) with flashlights to remove dozens, perhaps hundreds of slugs from our yard. They are then *ahem* re-homed to the forest, or so I tell the sensitive one. One of those cases when you teach kindness and respect for all life and then it backfires when you try and dispose of a bag of disgusting slugs. 🙂

A quick list of food stuff I have growing again:

Lavender

Rosemary

Eggplant

Lilikoi (passion fruit)

Papaya

Lemongrass

Chaya (tree spinach)

Mamaki (for tea)

Asparagus

Bananas

Ulu (breadfruit tree, not making fruit yet)

Avocado (not too big yet)

Kale

Tomato

Spinach

Swiss Chard

Green onions

Chives

Kalo (taro)

Seriously, not bad considering I haven’t cared at all about food growing in a long time!! Kids and I started some seeds last week and they have sprouted, so soon I want to add to the above list:

Cucumber

Pumpkins

Sweet Corn

Broccoli

grr. slug damage on the eggplant. But since our nightly slug hunts the population is going down!

So pleased these Seeds of Change organic pumpkins sprouted! These seeds were over 3 years old.

Also Seeds of Change organic sweet corn! Old seeds still sprouted.

Seeds of Change organic cucumber sprouted!

Our two banana “areas” since they are not really singular trees anymore! We’ve harvested 4x from the one on the right and 2x from the left.

Our still young ‘ulu tree (breadfruit) from a free tree giveaway years ago. It’s doing really well 🙂

Thanks for stopping by friends! I know it’s been awhile. Super easy seed starting tip, get your kid’s elementary school class to save all their milk cartons for you! No need to purchase those silly expensive seed starter kits. 🙂

Need to mark this in the gardening journal (that’s what this blog is!). Today, May 18 at about 11am I saw our first real monarch activity around the crown flower. It’s been months we haven’t had much, and today I rescued 6 itty bitty caterpillars and put them in the IKEA mesh hamper for safety from birds until they decide to leave and make their chrysalis.

I’m a neglectful blogger and perhaps an even more neglectful gardener. This is my biggest selling point for planting permaculture style plants: no fuss required. I go out every few weeks and harvest food. That’s my gardening method. Because I’ve planted (or allowed to grow on their own) things like papaya, chard, chaya, banana, citrus, mamaki, kale, popolo berry, mint, oregano, mountain apple, asparagus and a few other things that can withstand some munching from bugs and still make food. Even more “annual” style plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and beans, when mixed in with this bunch of other wildness needs very little care. Plant a seed or plant. Wait. Harvest food. That’s it.

I just wanted to share some photos of the food in the yard this morning. Not everything is “food” yet; the mountain apple tree has been eaten pretty badly, but there’s new growth, so it will bloom again. And our orange tree has tiny little green fruits for the first time. It’s like welcoming new friends 😀

Our first bananas! Originally from a keiki I got from a friend in our permaculture course

Some of our many papayas!

Chaya on overload. Gonna have to eat some soon!

One of our basils- got used in Thai curry last week

The biggest daikon ever. 🙂

Baby strawberries! I have let these get a bit overgrown with “weeds” and now they are happy because slugs aren’t eating them anymore

From one tiny huli, this kalo is big now

Hiding among the “weeds”

Mamaki tea anyone?

Nasturtiums that keep blooming

TONS of mint

Aloe for all the kids injuries

New growth on the mountain apple tree after a season of getting eaten by something

Most meals at this house are fridge to table in 30 minutes or less. It is out of sheer desperation for lack of prep time that I have read about, implemented and even come up with my own time hacks. (Things like pre-making big pots of brown rice and freezing in portions; slow cooker everything and 20 minute soup 3 nights a week!)

Sometimes, when I have the time and an extra set of hands to keep the kiddos from running in the street, I like to make stuff that requires more than “chop, cook, serve.”

This whole meal was about an hour of prep/cook. WAY more time than I usually spend in the kitchen, but as I get the luxury of blogging this my boys are busy loading the dishwasher. ❤ them!

So here’s the details:

Kidney Bean Meatballs

Make the meatballs first, they take the longest. (Make this your own by adding hot sauce, steak sauce or liquid smoke if you want. All would be great!)

1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1/4 onion

2 cloves garlic

Handful of baby carrots

1 cup cooked brown rice

1 tbsp ketchup

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tbsp Italian seasoning

1 tsp vegan Worcestershire sauce

3/4 instant oats (or regular oatmeals pulsed a few times in the food processor)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. In your food processor put onion, carrot and garlic. Pulse a few times until well chopped and mixed. Add rice, pulse a few more times. Add beans and pulse until most are smashed. This should be chunky-ish though, you don’t want a paste. Scoop it out into a bowl and add ketchup, sauces and oats. Mix really well and using hands to form into balls, place on cookie sheet. (I made about 20)

Bake 20-30 minutes or until outside gets firm and golden. Let cool for a bit (they firm up as they cool).

While those are baking, prepare-

Colcannon

Colcannon= Irish side dish consisting of mashed potatoes with cabbage (or in this case, kale that was taking over the garden) Make this dish as big or small as you need!

Potatoes , quartered

Kale or cabbage, de-stemmed and chopped

Dijon mustard

Green onions, sliced

Boil the potatoes till soft. Turn off heat and throw in the greens. (Let them steam for 10 minutes while you prep the Brussels Sprouts.)

After greens have softened, drain the whole pot and mash well with non dairy milk, salt, pepper and Dijon mustard. Add in green onions and still well.

Agave and Mustard Glazed Brussels Sprouts

2 cups Brussels Sprouts

2 tbsp agave

2 tbsp yellow mustard

1/2 tbsp olive oil

Salt

Slivered almonds (garnish)

Whisk agave, mustard and oil together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Trim and halve the Brussels sprouts. Place them in a skillet with enough water to move them around a bit and steam them until bright green and tender. As water is getting low and evaporating, pour in mustard mixture stirring until nicely glazed, about 2-3 minutes. Pour into a serving dish and sprinkle with slivered almonds.

If you timed it all right, everything should be ready when the almonds go on! The meatballs had cooled enough to be firm and the husband and son had theirs with gravy (but it wasn’t vegan so I skipped that) but if I make this again, I’m doing it up with gravy too. Total Iowa comfort food, veganized (and gluten free!)

Awhile back I posted that a new species of butterfly had found us. The Gulf Fritillary butterfly first appeared on our dining room light at dinner, then we saw the spiky caterpillar in our yard and then discovered a (strange!) chrysalis hanging on the shed.

About 2 weeks ago another spiky caterpillar appeared and we put it in the “hatchery” to see if it would form a chrysalis and it did! This morning, it hatched. It’s so tiny compared to the monarch! But I love the wing patterns and it liked the flowers. 🙂

See another bloggers comments on this butterfly in Hawaii here: http://hawaiinaturejournal.weebly.com/hawaii-plants-and-animals-in-the-backyard-and-beyond/butterfly-kisses

With a completely neglectful approach to gardening, you get good surprises. Like huge popolo berry that pop up, seemingly overnight!

Popolo berry! No berries yet, but in the next few weeks those tiny white flowers will turn to green berries then dark purple

Popolo berry is a an important native Hawaiian plant, and one that you can’t pick up at your local garden center. It just sort of pops up wherever it feels welcome, I think. The one pictured here is the biggest one that I have right now, but there are at least 5 others of various sizes that I have welcomed by not weeding! Now that I have a few growing, I’m going to try my hand at propagation of this useful plant. I know a few healers who would love to have a supply of this on hand.

Other delights I encountered on my early morning look in the garden include blooming nasturtiums, celosia, lettuce sprouts, kale sprouts and daikon sprouts. I have abandoned my once ambitious seedling growing efforts to now just throwing some seeds on loosened soil and see what happens. This has yielded far better results than expected. In summary, everything so far, has grown. And I was able to dismantle my seedling growing station with lights, etc which took up a lot of space and if I didn’t tend to it would quickly die.

Here’s a few more shots from the lovely morning here on Oahu. Aloha, Friends.